Description

In "Preparing School Library Media Specialists for the New Century: Results of a Survey" ( Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 42: 3, pp. 220-227, Summer 2001), Carol Tilley and Daniel Callison found that among schools accredited by the American Library Association technology-focused courses ranked highest on the list of the most widely required courses for this professional speciality. The survey also revealed that technology-related courses dominated the roster of elective coursework.
A quick reading of the survey may suggest that these graduate programs in information studies had presciently understood the increasing role that information and communications technologies (ICTs) play in the daily lives of both young people and the information professionals who serve them. Yet, data from the survey also revealed that ICT-related coursework focused on ICTs in service of professionals' needs, not ICTs in service of youth empowerment. Furthermore, the survey's scope did not allow it to address more illuminating questions including the extent to which other youth services information professionals such as public library children's specialists receive training in ICTs, to what degree education related to ICTs is supplanting a focus on traditional media and technologies, or how information schools can prepare professionals to foster transformative experiences for young people through the use of ICTs.
The purpose of this roundtable, then, is to provide a forum for discussing how information schools might more effectively educate youth services information professionals in the theory and application of ICTs to their interactions--structured and unstructured--with young people. Participants will be encouraged to bring relevant course descriptions, class syllabi, assigned readings, and course assignment description to the discussion to provide concrete examples of issues. The conversation will be enriched through references to appropriate models from community and social informatics, media literacy, and traditional librarianship, as well as research and best practices in education. The Pacific Bell/UCLA Initiative for 21st Century Literacies provides an additional corpus of examples, research, and practice on which to draw.